Nowadays, everyone is talking about Ikigai, the Japanese way of living that involves finding your life’s purpose. It seems like a simple Venn diagram where you constantly seek the intersection of what you are good at, what you enjoy doing, what makes you money and what the world needs. It helps you discover your passion, your mission, your profession and your vocation, and if all these things align, you live the perfect life-or at least that’s how it has been presented. It is a great model that can help us clarify our thoughts and understand where we stand in the world. What is often overlooked, however, is the larger context of this model.
Ikigai is, in some ways, like Zen Buddhism-ideas that emerged from Japan in the post-war period, to whitewash Japan’s dark imperial history. Today, when we think of Germans, we remember the Nazis, but when we think of the Japanese, we do not recall their atrocities in Korea, China and Southeast Asia. Instead, we think of Zen Buddhism, Ikigai, and their excellent industries, or Japan as a tourist destination where tradition blends brilliantly with modernity. We rarely discuss the fact that Japan is a xenophobic society, resistant to immigration and set on doing things its own way. Or the hierarchical Bushido code of Samurai. It’s a society where men are considered superior to women, and we hear stories of how the queen was not allowed to visit her parental home until she had borne an heir.
When Ikigai uses the phrase “what the world needs,” which world are we talking about? Does this world mean our family? Does it mean our neighbourhood, our community, our nation, or the entire world? That changes everything. A community’s needs may not be compatible with the world’s needs, especially if that community believes the entire world must align with one way of thinking.
The model also doesn’t address reciprocity-it talks about what you want and what the world needs, but it doesn’t consider what you give or what the world can give you in return. The idea of mutuality and reciprocity is often missing from global conversations. We talk about self-actualisation and self-realisation but rarely discuss the role of others in our lives, and our role in their life. In the Ikigai model, the world doesn’t care what you love or what you’re good at-the world will pay you only for what it needs. It seems like a fair transaction between two essentially selfish beings.
What about a world that encourages or enables you to do what you’re good at or what you love? In elite families, people have plenty of resources. A child doesn’t need to worry about financial survival and has the luxury of doing what they love because they already have all the money they need, even without being particularly good at anything. The family’s resources will support them and future generations. So, technically, rich people could spend all their time doing what they love. But that’s not how the world works.
We find that the Ikigai model doesn’t address the concept of class. If you come from a poor family, you focus on what makes you money, often at the expense of what you love or what you’re good at. When we look at rich families, we don’t necessarily see people doing what they love either; they still seem to be seeking their centre, attending spiritual retreats to find the answers to their lives. So while models like Ikigai are useful, we need a model that also focuses on reciprocity.
This is where the Indian model of yagna comes in, ignored even by Brahmins who are spellbound by devotional doctrines where the poor submit to the powerful. Yagya is seen as something religious, something Hindu-and if it’s Hindu, it must be casteist. But there is much to Hinduism, and much to India, that isn’t about caste, just as there’s much in Japan that has nothing to do with its imperial past or its xenophobia.
The concept of Yagya is about mutuality: “Give me as I give you” is how it is defined in Yajur Veda’s Taittriya Samhita. It’s a model of reciprocity, a network-based approach where you don’t speak about “the world” in the abstract but about real individuals-people you interact with directly, rather than an intangible concept like the world. It is about repaying debts and earning credit. It is about obligations and investments, not rights and duties.
There are many models in the world, and what we adopt depends on what is marketed. Which ideas from a culture are considered suitable for the world depends, in many ways, on what is trending. Perhaps Indians need to market the Yagna model as Japan markets Ikigai.
